Menas of Constantinople

Menas of Constantinople, also known in Latin sources as Mennas, was a sixth-century Chalcedonian bishop who served as Patriarch of Constantinople from 536 until his death in 552. He was a native of Alexandria in Egypt; the year of his birth is not recorded in the surviving historical sources, which concentrate on his public career under Emperor Justinian I. After coming to the imperial capital he served as a presbyter and administered the hospice of Saint Sampson, a well-known charitable institution near Hagia Sophia that received the sick and the poor. Nothing reliable is preserved about his family, education, or any monastic profession, and he should not be confused with the earlier Egyptian martyr Saint Menas, a different and far more widely invoked figure.

His elevation followed the crisis over Anthimus I, a Miaphysite whom Justinian had placed on the patriarchal throne. When Pope Agapetus I of Rome arrived in Constantinople in 536, he refused communion with Anthimus and secured his deposition. Justinian then chose Menas as successor, and Agapetus himself consecrated him patriarch on 13 March 536, an unusual instance of a bishop of Rome ordaining a patriarch of the eastern capital. Agapetus died in Constantinople only weeks later. In May and June of the same year Menas presided over a home synod that confirmed Anthimus’s deposition and condemned Severus of Antioch, Peter of Apamea, and the monk Zoora, thereby aligning the church of the capital with the Council of Chalcedon and with Rome.

Throughout his patriarchate Menas generally supported Justinian’s religious legislation. He subscribed to imperial measures against Origenist teaching associated with the Palestinian monasteries, including the edict of the early 540s that condemned Origen and related propositions. He was also drawn into the Three Chapters controversy, Justinian’s campaign to condemn certain writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa in the hope of conciliating Miaphysite opinion without formally abandoning Chalcedon. Under imperial pressure Menas signed the condemnation, later withdrew his assent after protests from Western clergy who saw the edict as a slight to Chalcedon, and subsequently subscribed again. The episode illustrated both the patriarch’s dependence on the court and the growing rift between eastern and western interpretations of the council of 451.

Relations with Rome became especially strained after Pope Vigilius was brought to Constantinople in 547. Menas and Vigilius fell into open conflict over the Three Chapters; they withdrew communion from one another for a time, and Menas temporarily omitted Vigilius’s name from the diptychs before a reconciliation was arranged under imperial auspices. Menas did not live to see the Second Council of Constantinople, the Fifth Ecumenical Council, which Justinian convened in 553 to ratify the condemnation of the Three Chapters. He died in Constantinople in August 552 and was succeeded by Eutychius, who presided at that council. The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church commemorate him as a saint on 25 August. No securely attested burial site, formal act of canonization, or list of patronages has come down from the principal sources.